Unified Poops in Velos’ Punchbowl

Sorry for the visual but couldn’t resist. Just got the following email from Unified Patents.

All the normal caveats apply; I haven’t reviewed the filings (and won’t) and Unified may not succeed though they’ve had some recent successes.

Why the hate on Velos? In contrast to the transparency with which MPEG LA and HEVC Advanced operate, Velos still won’t publish rates, identify its essential patents, or even inform the market if they’ll be seeking royalties for HEVC-encoded content, despite being a significant concern to many producers and potential HEVC adopters (both other pools have ruled out charging content royalties for free internet content). Given that HEVC came to market about six years ago, it’s not like Velos’ IP owners haven’t had time to get their thoughts together.

Long story short; few will be sad if a quarter of the Velos IP assets are invalidated. And it’s fabulous to have an IP watchdog like Unified making technology adoption safer and fairer for all technology companies.

Author: Jan Ozer

Ozer is a leading expert on H.264, H.265, and VP9 encoding for live and on-demand production. In his consulting practice, Ozer helps streaming publishers produce highly optimized and deliverable streams and to choose encoders, transcoders, and workflows that optimize cost, efficiency and flexibility. Ozer is the owner of the Streaming Learning Center and is a contributing editor to Streaming Media Magazine.